Tag: mobile gaming news

Nix Hydra Inc. has raised millions to expand its successful game Egg Baby.

The mobile gaming Los Angeles-based startup, co-founded in 2012 by former Yale classmates Lina Chen and Naomi Ladizinsky, that creates mobile games made by females for females, has raised $5 million from Foundry Group to grow their popular game Egg Baby, as well as launch additional titles.

Egg Baby became a huge hit among young women without marketing.

The game was launched in 2013, was well received and gained quite the following among women and teen girls. The inspiration for Egg Baby came from a school experiment that assigned students to care for a raw egg as if it were their baby. Even though there was no marketing for the game and the initial version was quite rough, it was a hit.

In the game, a player hatches an egg, which produces a unique creature that gives gifts. The type of creature that hatches depends on how the player interacts and cares for the egg (ex. washes, dresses, feeds, tickles it, etc.). If the player forgets to care for the egg, it will die. A major reason why the game has achieved a massive following is players like to show off their creature and many new users download the game after seeing what their friends have shared.

The game has received 9 million downloads. “We didn’t think it was going to be that popular,” said Lina Chen. According to Chen, approximately 85 percent of players are female and the majority of players are under 25 years old.

Nix Hydra will continue its female-focused mobile gaming objective.

Naomi Ladizinsky commented that in the mobile gaming industry there have been a lot of games “with the same ideas iterated on over and over again”, such as games that fall into the trendy battle, quest, and runner game genres. “It’s a tech dude’s perspective,” she said. Nix Hydra anticipates it will hire an additional 20 people over the course of the next year and will use the funding it has received to launch two new games and develop a franchise around Egg Baby.

20% of American gamers would rather forgo sex than mobile games for a week.

Part II of the Mobile Gaming Chronicles survey from the mobile social gaming network PlayPhone, revealed the main spending habit and behavior trends of American mobile gamers and, among other surprising discoveries, the survey found that if they had to make a choice, one in five respondents would rather go without sex than mobile games for a week.

The group surveyed consisted of 1,000 Americans who play games on tablets and smartphones.

According to the survey, 37% of all American respondents said they would be willing to pay $5 or more a month for a gaming subscription that would offer them a “complete gaming experience”, which would include full access to games, levels and items in the game. This is a much smaller percentage compared to the 57% of Latinos who said they would pay for a subscription. However, in terms of gender, there was not as big of a gap. 54% of men vs. 46% of women said they would pay a subscription fee.

In regard to age group, it was found that gamers aged 25 to 29 were more likely to pay for mobile games than any other age group, with 49% in this age range claiming they would spend 5 or more dollars for a monthly subscription. As for those survey respondents who were self-proclaimed mobile gamers, 53% said they were likely to spend.

“Just as we seek to reveal emerging trends in mobile gaming monetization, we feel it’s essential to investigate behaviors that define heavy spenders,” PlayPhone CMO Anders Evju said. “It furthers our goals of maximizing value for our game developer and operator partners and enables us to continue to deliver an optimal social gaming experience,” Evju added.

Some people even confessed they’ve engaged in mobile gaming while behind the wheel.

In addition to investigating the spending habits of smartphone and tablet game players, the PlayPhone survey focused on other trends among gamers. For instance, they found that a surprising 17% of survey respondents admitted to playing mobile games while driving, on a frequent or occasional basis.

It was also discovered that 49% of all survey responders admitted to engaging in mobile gaming at work, while 68% said they sacrificed sleep regularly or on occasion on non-work nights to complete a game and 58% confessed they did this on work nights, too.